


Nothing Ventured

by skyenapped



Category: The Following
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-13
Updated: 2013-05-13
Packaged: 2017-12-11 17:57:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/801504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyenapped/pseuds/skyenapped
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The bureau still needed Ryan's help, but he’d gone back to Brooklyn and the bottle with hardly more than a ‘sorry’ and a shrug. And they’d called his phone and left messages and passive aggressively pleaded for his insight and assistance – but only one person actually got in their car and made that drive up I-95 to New York City and knocked on his door.</p><p>That person was Mike Weston.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Ventured

**Author's Note:**

> Another random one-shot I did because seriously, these two own me. Essentially, Ryan reflects on all of his mistakes after the horrible outcome of a hostage situation with Joe. Mike tries admirably to save him from his demons, and together they realize that this string of tragic circumstances has some kind of bittersweet silver lining after all. 
> 
> Unbeta'd because I'm lazy. 
> 
> Also, thank you all _so much_ for all the kudos and kind comments on my last Hardston fic. It means a lot, because it's intimidating writing for a new fandom, and it just...made me happy to know you enjoyed it. :)
> 
> -s

 

* * *

 

Ryan felt like he regretted everything.

 

Joe Carroll. Killing his father’s killer. Loving Claire. A Sunday in ’82, a Friday in ’94, a Tuesday in 2006. They blended together after a while; a long, dark list of would’ve, should’ve, could’ve moments playing over and over in his head like an old VHS tape. He coped better than most people might, despite his vices. He was still alive and he could function, for the most part, and that was more than enough to expect of him.

 

Sometimes he regretted certain things more. Since time doesn’t heal everything, but does temper it, he tended to, like most people, dwell on the latest mistake; last month, last week, two hours ago. It was a hopeless habit, if you think about it; some desperate, deluded idea that if the past just wasn’t _too_ far away, maybe it could still be changed. But time was an illusion and words like _past, present, future,_ they were all just ways to sort our lives into categories of _gone, here, almost gone_ to make things mildly more bearable. To keep us from trying to go back, and from rushing forward – the two things we do anyway, and no one more so than Ryan Hardy.

 

He was thinking about four days ago, about a thirty-three second deficit, and a bullet an inch too far left.

 

And he was drinking vodka straight from the bottle.

 

And it wasn’t doing much.

 

And he was already numb, so that didn’t count.

 

Alcohol had always been consistent, but tonight it disappointed; fell short entirely of doing even a mediocre job of easing the pain and guilt and hollowness that had been systematically corroding him from the inside out for nearly a week – or a year, or ten, or twenty – it didn’t matter. He couldn’t pinpoint when he became this unraveling thread, and it was probably a lot longer ago than six days, but surely watching Claire’s head jolt back from the power of a gunshot was the lynchpin in falling apart, so he figured _when_ he ultimately became this person was irrelevant.

 

Losing Claire was traumatic on a brand new level. Not because he was _in_ love with her – because he wasn’t, not anymore – but because he simply loved her; because she was the warm, gentle, beautiful reminder of a time in his life that, while surrounded by chaos, was somehow still good and safe and promising. It hurt more than there were pain receptors in the brain. It hurt that bad because he’d _never_ see her again, because he’d _never_ hear his name on her lips, _never_ be able to go back to that place again, when things were okay. That’s what it felt like. That’s why he drank.

 

Ryan didn’t have a lot of memories like Claire. Most of them were cold, gory, tragic; the kind he preferred to forget but wasn’t offered the luxury of. So it was less about how they’d grown apart, less about their amicable but distant reunion and far, far more about their history. And with Claire gone, it felt like someone had deleted their story from the timeline altogether. It was gone. A waste. For nothing. For naught. Everything ventured, nothing gained.

 

At the same time, and possibly almost as painful, was the harsh truth that at the end of the day, it changed everything and yet – it changed nothing at all. Claire was gone, but so were dozens of people who had died at the hands of Joe and his cult. Joey was another scarred victim of circumstance, living in Pennsylvania with his grandparents, and Emma Hill was in a maximum security prison awaiting trial, and Ryan Hardy – broken, damaged, bitter, _alcoholic_ Ryan Hardy – was still the same, only sans another part of what might’ve been left of his broken heart.

 

The Bureau still needed his help, but he’d gone back to Brooklyn and the bottle with hardly more than a ‘sorry’ and a shrug. And they’d called his phone and left messages and passive aggressively pleaded for his insight and assistance – but only one person actually got in their car and made that drive up I-95 to New York City and knocked on his door.

 

That person was Mike Weston. And that was day two.

 

Day one had been too chaotic. It was bullets and blood and brain matter and screaming and shock and sirens and even if Mike had _tried_ to talk to Ryan, it would’ve been pointless. But he’d known better, had hung back and watched, even his skin hurting, his whole self aching with sympathy pain for what Ryan was going through. And while it destroyed him; wrenched his heart around in his chest, he let him go. He gave him space. He had to.

 

And the next day he showed up and if Ryan had let him in, it would’ve been too easy. It would’ve made him worry even more, if Ryan had been so out of character as to set down the liquor and open the door. So Mike waited for the most he was going to get – a grunt from behind the wall, alerting him to, if not life, at least existence – and then reluctantly returned to his car, rolled up the windows, reclined his seat and went to sleep.

 

On day three, Mike got Ryan to open the door, but eye contact was minimal if not non-existent. It was hard to tell if it was pain, or shame, or guilt, or inebriation keeping Ryan’s head down and eyelids heavy, but Mike tried hard not to take it to heart.

 

“I _know_ you’re not okay,” he said, and honestly, it was more of a whine. “But _please_ tell me you’ll be all right.”

 

It wouldn’t have made much sense to anyone else, but it did to them. It meant Mike knew everything was shit and Claire was dead there was no going back and things had gone from bad to worse to horrible, awful, indescribable, nauseating, traumatizing, disgusting, _world-leveling_ in a matter of hours. And he knew Ryan was going to cope with the status quo the way he coped with everything else – very poorly, or not at all, and then by drinking and shutting out anyone who still gave a damn. But begging him to promise he’d be _all right_ meant, _I need you – don’t eat your gun tonight._

So Ryan nodded.

 

Mike went to a hotel for two nights and in between, his doorjamb visits were painstaking and heartbreaking and reeked of booze but they served their purpose; were worth the energy every time he heard Ryan get up to open the door and he was able to see for himself that he was, in at least a physical capacity, still there.

 

“You ready to let me in, Ryan?” Mike asked on day five.

 

Ryan stared for a few seconds, partly because he was buzzed and partly because he was dazed and partly because – _how the hell did this happen?_ Howdid this kid know him so well already and why did he give a damn? Ryan stepped to the side and lost himself in trying to decide on the better question: why Mike cared so much – or why _he_ did. He shouldn’t have cared about _anything_ , particularly after what had happened. Hell, he was numb to everything else, to all other feelings except the ones that hurt, to the potency of liquor – even to his freezing thermostat. So why Mike had the power to so brazenly cut through that long-standing, stagnant apathy was a mystery Ryan couldn’t even process long enough to solve.

 

He shut the door a little hard in his confusion. Mike complicated everything. Without him, things were simple. Horrible, but simple. With him, there was this obnoxious light creeping in from all directions and it made Ryan feel worse and better, responsible and free, guilty and off the hook – all at the same time. Mike was everything he needed, but didn’t deserve and couldn’t afford to lose.

 

Mike had what Claire hadn’t – the understanding of the job, which had been the void that had strained Ryan’s relationship with her even though it wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t on the front lines – _thank God_ – and couldn’t fully understand the way it all worked, how it all felt, the victory of a win or the brutal, crushing blow of a loss; the harsh reality that sometimes the good guys can’t fix everything, can’t save everyone, and that those _sometimes_ can feel like _most of the time._ Ultimately, they had lost touch because of Ryan’s fear that he would one day lose her – though once he actually did, he couldn’t say if their distance tempered the pain at all – but the concept that they would never have that quiet understanding of the job had remained.

 

Mike, on the other hand, got it. He was beside Ryan during the worst; in the same line of fire, recipient of the same threats, pulled the same all-nighters, sat out the same stakeouts, and suffered comparable loss, and death, and body counts, and the whole repulsive, haunting wreckage and emotional collateral damage that accompanied the tracking of a serial killer of Joe’s caliber for the FBI. What happened to their psyche through it all wasn’t something you talk about over steak at the dinner table, and yet needing someone else to know was crucial. The only way to really eliminate that catch-22 was to be around another person who had been there too, who had also endured, and won, and failed, and bled; who had been afraid, and brave, and hopeful, and cynical, and lost, and found, and lost again. Then, they could talk about it if they needed to, but usually wouldn’t have to.

 

Mike seemed to notice Ryan’s preoccupation with his thoughts, and cleared his throat. “Ryan,” was all he had to say.

 

“Yeah,” Ryan acknowledged. He had a lazy grip on an open bottle of Skyy and Mike was eyeing it, and him, with even more concern than usual.

 

Ryan noticed and rolled his eyes, “Relax. My first one of the night.”

 

He waited to see if Mike would make some comment on his well-being or lack of, like his sister, or a shrink, but he didn’t. He just looked at him, and not with pity or even sympathy, but with understanding, empathy, hope, and followed him slowly into the living room.

 

“So you’re not drunk, then.”

 

Ryan scoffed and shook his head, “Not for a lack of trying.”

 

They were quiet for a moment, with Ryan setting the bottle down on the coffee table and collapsing with a resigned sigh and Mike just staring, watching, feeling awful and sorry and helpless until he couldn’t keep it in any longer.

 

“I’m really sorry, Ryan,” he blurted out, voice breaking. “I’m _really—”_

“I know.” Ryan cut him off gently. “Not your fault, Mike.”

 

That was true. Mike hadn’t been anywhere around when Claire was killed and neither his presence nor anyone else’s would’ve ultimately made a difference; she’d had a target on her back for years, before any of it went into play, possibly before her and Joe even married in the first place. There was really no telling, except that Claire Matthews was never meant to get out of any of it alive, no matter what Ryan or Mike or anyone did or didn’t do. But Mike still felt, to some degree, responsible. Perhaps less so for her death and the actions of the cult, and more for Ryan’s wellbeing. Which wasn’t some position he’d been appointed to by anyone except himself, but, that didn’t change the way he felt.

 

He took a few steps closer. “It’s not yours either.”

 

Ryan laughed bitterly and raked his hands over his face.

 

“It’s _not,”_ Mike insisted. “It’s not, Ryan.”

 

“Okay,” Ryan conceded, looking up. Mike could tell he didn’t mean it, was only saying it to make him feel better, could tell he still blamed himself, knew he probably spent a hundred percent of his time going over all of the possible alternative scenarios in his head had he only driven a little faster, or known a shortcut, or known what to say, or aimed a little better.

 

Mike shook his head in frustration. He slid the bottle of vodka out of the way and sat down on the table. Ryan was _impossible_. He was fire, wind, and rain and Mike kept getting burned, knocked down, and soaked, and still kept touching, kept standing, kept standing in the downpour.  It was a good burden, somehow, but it didn’t mean it was any less exhausting to carry.

 

“Why are you here, Mike?” Ryan asked suddenly.

 

The question caught Mike off guard, because he figured his reason for showing up tonight, and the past three before, was pretty obvious. He also figured Ryan knew the answer already and must have been deflecting because they were both internally squirming under the pressure and intensity of the tension between them. It wasn’t usually like this. It was usually at work when they felt it, since that’s where they always were, and they were usually able to suppress it until they were scurrying out into the field and into distraction. But here, it was fenced in, and multiplying, and trapped between the walls and their bodies, and there were no calls to take, no radios going off, no leads to follow. It was thicker than ever and demanded to be dealt with.

 

Mike answered for the sake of answering; to humor Ryan, to fill the silence, to calm his own pulse. “I thought it was pretty obvious I was checking on you.”

 

“Well,” Ryan opened his hands and motioned toward himself. “I’m fine.”

 

It was fitting that his tone bordered on sarcastic, because he looked the furthest from ‘fine’ that Mike had ever seen. His eyes were a brand new shade of red. He looked more exhausted than usual, eyes grey and hollow and it was evident he’d been literally sustaining on mid-shelf liquor for half a week. Mike could practically see all of the things Ryan blamed himself for, written in the creases on his face. But it wouldn’t be worth arguing with him, wouldn’t be worth trying to convince him that it wasn’t his fault Joe had used his ex-wife as a human shield, or that Ryan had hardly missed a shot in twenty-something years, or that he couldn’t control the time or the wind or fate or luck or the malfeasance of others. No, Ryan was going to take this one, like all the rest, and internalize it, and wear it, and own it, until it eventually swallowed him whole. And as long as Ryan pushed him away, there wasn’t anything Mike could do about it.

 

“Do you want me to leave?”

 

Ryan hesitated, looked at Mike, at the floor, at the vodka, and back. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

 

“That isn’t an answer, Ryan!” Mike shouted, surging forward and then back, shaking his head wildly, holding back tears, because _God damn it, this was frustrating;_ madly, overwhelmingly frustrating, and he didn’t know how to make any progress without yelling because lately it seemed to be the only thing that got Ryan’s attention and held it.

 

“Why do you want this, Mike?” Ryan snapped, a bitter half-smile shadowing his face, for a second, and then it was gone, and he was looking up expectantly. When Mike didn’t respond, he continued, motioning with his hands, voice raised just enough to get his point across. “I mean, _why?_ Why would you intentionally do this to yourself? Everyone I care about dies, one way or another, you get that, right? Do you? And the ones who don’t, I kill? I shoot them in the fucking head because I can’t aim my—”

 

“Ryan, that wasn’t—”

 

“Shut up, Mike! I know you think because you’ve made it this long, you’re the exception to the rule, but you’re not. Okay? You’re not. Something will happen, because it always does! And everyone who’s ever survived, it doesn’t matter, because I push them away. I’ll push _you_ away, Mike. Hell, I already have. I already am. And I know you know all of this already, so why? Why do you want to be a part of this?”

 

Ryan leaned forward and grabbed the bottle of vodka, and Mike promptly and roughly jerked it out of his grip.

 

“I’m _already_ a part of this, Ryan!”

 

“You could leave, Mike.”

 

“I don’t want to leave.”

 

“It’s not too late,” Ryan persisted. “You’re young, Mike. You can get out. Give up your gun. Turn in your badge. Do something that won’t ruin you, won’t get you killed. Travel, join the Peace Corp – hell, go back to school, be an architect, or a doctor. Marry your T.A., move back to the west coast. Find someone normal, Mike, someone your age, somebody sober. Someone with half the demons and twice the hope.”

 

Mike was crying openly now, smearing the tears across his face, breathing hard and worried, choking on his words. “No! I don’t want that!”

 

That he was so upset and lacking control of his emotions wasn’t as much of a testament to Mike’s character as it was his feelings for Ryan. He’d stayed calm so many times; he’d laughed in the face of adversity – _literally_ – but hearing Ryan tell him to _leave_ , that he’d be better off? That was a punch to the gut that he admittedly wasn’t strong enough to handle.

 

“Mike…”

 

“No, Ryan _, I don’t!”_

Ryan sighed heavily, regret and conflicting decisions competing in his head for attention. He watched Mike falling apart in front of him and the compulsion to reach out and hold him, and comfort him, was so overwhelming, repressing it was almost physically painful. He’d fallen hard for this kid, and as hard as it was to admit, it was even harder to accept. Because if Ryan accepted that idea, then letting Mike go would be impossible, even if it was for the greater good. He just wouldn’t be able to do it. He needed Mike as much as Mike needed him. But his track record screamed that it would never work out, never end well; that there was no white picket fence in his future – as if that even fit him – and happily ever after wasn’t in cards for him, or him and Mike together. He believed it was still possible for Mike though, and some kind of love-fueled sense of responsibility had him trying to save the kid from him, and from the job, and the grim life of being an agent during the Joe Carroll era. He wanted Mike but he also wanted him safe, and he wanted him happy. He figured those things were mutually exclusive.

 

“You can’t save me, Mike,” he said finally, white knuckle grip on his own knee to keep from reaching out and putting his hand on Mike’s shoulder. “You can’t.”

 

“I can’t try,” Mike said, swallowing down gasps.

 

Ryan smiled weakly at his loyalty and shook his head, “No. Mike, you’re twenty-six years old. It’s not your job to put me back together.”

 

“Okay,” Mike conceded. “Okay, I won’t. I don’t want to change you, anyway, Ryan. But let me stay, _please._ Don’t tell me to leave.”

 

Mike wasn’t impulsive, not really, not usually – never really even considered it a noticeable personality trait until Ryan came along. And then suddenly he’d made a rash leap from cool, calm, and collected to a guns-blazing, act-now-think-later, ruthless, pistol-whipping, where-to-next, out-for-blood sort of M.O. that was so night and day from his old self it almost even scared him. And while it hadn’t always served him well (read: Roderick), there were benefits from falling into this takes-no-prisoners, out-for-vengeance attitude and the first and foremost one was—he was closer to Ryan now. Ryan had seen the change, noticed the sacrifice and trusted him for it. Sometimes, that in and of itself, was enough for Mike to consider that all the gunshots and the stab wounds and the close calls and near misses had been worth it. It had all been a fair trade even for the tight-rope bond he walked with Ryan.  

 

He wasn’t feeling any less impulsive perched on the edge of his seat in front of Ryan, with wild, unresolved energy and frustration spurring his typically bradycardic heartbeat into the mid-nineties.  He wasn’t even sure what it was he needed to do. Kiss him? Punch him? Ask him why? Break the bottle of vodka against the floor? Storm out? Refuse to leave? The questions were endless but the answers – even just one – were elusive.  

 

Fortunately, Ryan spoke up, giving Mike the willpower to hold back a little longer.

 

“I just…Mike,” he sighed again. “You’re brilliant, okay? I didn’t—I didn’t see it at first, or, I don’t know, maybe I did but—you know, complimenting people isn’t my strong suit…”

 

Mike wiped his eyes and scoffed.

 

Ryan continued, “What I’m saying is, you have everything at your feet. You could do anything. You still have a future and…and I just don’t want this job to take that away from you. And I—I _am_ the job.”

 

“But I don’t hate it, Ryan,” Mike told him, leaning forward. He looked Ryan straight in the eyes as if it would help convince him.

 

“I don’t hate it, either, Mike,” Ryan said honestly. “I loved it for fifteen years. And it’s still part of me. And I don’t know – after everything that’s happened, I still…don’t know if I’d take that back. But, what I hate…what I can’t _stand?_ Is the person it made me.”

 

Mike watched him, saddened, holding on to his belief that he was doing the right thing, that he wouldn’t regret not taking Ryan’s advice and getting the hell out; that the FBI and Joe Carroll and whatever other monster he encountered during his career wouldn’t ruin him the same way.  

 

 “It’s what I wanted, though,” he insisted. “This is what I wanted to do, Ryan. I _still_ do. I don’t wanna go away. I don’t want to move, or go back to school, or be an architect, or marry my T.A. I like it at the Bureau, and in the field, and when we win, you know? When we get it right, when we make a difference, even though sometimes it feels like we don’t—the times that we do, it makes it all worth it. And I don’t know, maybe in ten years, I’ll realize you were right. But that’ll be on me, Ryan, not on you,” Mike pointed to himself, and continued, voice cracking suddenly with increased emotion, “And it’s…it’s where I met _you_. And it’ll always…it’ll always be that to me. And I think,” he paused and looked down at his hands. “I think… _I’m—”_

Suddenly Ryan cleared his throat, loudly, intentionally cutting Mike off, “I need some water,” he announced, getting to his feet in one swift motion. Mike stood up a millisecond after, blocking Ryan’s path to the kitchen and nearly colliding with his head.

 

“Don’t—” Ryan said preemptively, voice firm but quiet.

 

“You don’t even know what I was going to say,” Mike countered, moving slightly to his left as Ryan moved halfheartedly to his right, and vice versa.

 

Ryan looked at him intently, long enough to imply that, _well, no, but I have a hunch._

 

“I think,” Mike repeated, and again, he dropped his head and averted his eyes. He wasn’t exactly sure why – not for a fear of judgment, but maybe a fear of rejection. “I mean, I _know_ I lo—”

 

“Mike…” Ryan looked away, over Mike’s shoulder. He couldn’t deal with any of it. Not what Mike wanted to say, not how he looked standing in front of him trying to get the words out, not him asking to stay, not him hanging on despite all advice to the contrary. Ryan couldn’t handle this level of loyalty, or his own feelings, or the impossibly small amount of distance between them. He could feel his heartbeat in his throat.

 

“Ryan…” Mike whined. “Why can’t I s—”

 

Ryan turned to face him again. “You can’t take it back, Mike.”

 

“Will you _stop?_ Stop trying to protect me from everything? I’m not helpless. I know what I want. I know the risks, Ryan. With the job. With you. I’m fine with it,” Mike looked up with renewed boldness. “I know you said you hate what the job made you. The kind of person it made you, but I…I _don’t_. I don’t know who you were before and I don’t care. I know who you are now and I don’t hate that person, I…I love him.”

 

Ryan put his hand up, just an inch or so from Mike’s mouth, but it was too late. The words were out. Blatant, honest, free. And what Mike didn’t understand was that Ryan wasn’t actually trying to protect _him_ this time. There was a small part of himself that realized despite all of the monumental loss in his life, and even in the past week alone, he actually had something left. Something important. So he wasn’t trying to spare Mike whatever imagined rejection he was afraid of – he was trying to spare himself the vulnerability of giving in; of admitting that he wasn’t quite as empty and hollow and unable to commit as he’d had everyone believe.

 

“Okay,” was all he could say, when he could anything at all. He nodded his head once and moved it dangerously close to Mike’s.

 

“Okay what?” Mike asked, heart pounding almost audibly.

 

Ryan put his hand on his shoulder and squeezed, “Okay,” he repeated. “Okay, don’t quit the FBI. Don’t go back to school. Don’t move to the west coast. _Don’t leave me.”_

Mike felt like he stopped breathing for several seconds. And when he surged forward to kiss Ryan, they both did. Breathing suddenly took a backseat to the desperate, overdue destruction of all the nearly-tangible tension weighing thick and heavy on the air. Mike took and took and Ryan pulled him in as close as he could and gave and gave, and Mike clung to fistfuls of his shirt and whined and held on tight like letting go would be deadly and permanent, and Ryan let him.

 

 “Ryan, wait—” Mike blurted out, when he’d stolen enough oxygen to form words. He buried his face against Ryan’s neck and he _had_ to say it. He had to make sure he made some effort to stop this if there was any chance it meant less to Ryan than it did to him. He couldn’t risk that sort of emotional devastation.

 

Ryan’s hand paused just short of Mike’s hip. “What’s wrong?”

 

It was a slightly rhetorical, isolated question. There was a lot wrong, but that was a given.

 

“Nothing, just don’t…” Mike whispered, looking up cautiously. “Don’t regret me tomorrow.”

 

And Ryan stopped, pulled back, face sober and focused in such a way that Mike hadn’t seen before; only traces of that sort of sincerity in fleeting instances during a good moment of a decent day. And those had been few and far between during their quest to capture Joe and his cult. It was revolutionary. It was a light at the end of the tunnel, for both of them. It was sign that things weren’t as rock-bottom hopeless as they’d seemed. That not every decision was a horrible decision, that some turned out okay – were wonderful, even – and sometimes it took one or two or a dozen of the first kind to get to the second kind; to get _here._

In retrospect, Mike saw the foolishness of his actions, but he couldn’t find a single ounce of himself that would undo any of it. And the drive from Quantico, and sleeping in his car, and in a strange Brooklyn hotel infested by parents of hipsters, and all the hallway welfare visits to Ryan’s place, and all the miscommunication, or the lack of communication, and the tension, and the words, and the silence, and the protecting, and the company, and that painful, enduring hope – had all been worth it.

 

With Ryan’s fingers tracing a path across his jawline, Mike’s mind stopped swirling, stopped recollecting; just stopped, completely, in a calming way, a way he hadn’t been able to stop it in years. The racing, the wondering, the second-guessing all slowed to a halt, nothing in its wake but a quiet sense of peace, and belonging, and _finally._

 

“Never.” Ryan told him.

 

The conviction in his voice was enough to steamroll any concerns Mike might’ve had that he’d wake up in an empty bed or that there’d be a plane ticket to San Diego on top of his clothes in the morning. And anything Ryan had ever said had always been comparable to the scripture for Mike anyway, so this was the seal in his sense of security that he had never felt – or wanted to feel – around anyone else.

 

He leaned in again, winding his arms around Ryan, head flush with his chest, listening to his heart as it beat, artificially corrected, and at least for now, strong and steady. That was another concern for another day, though, one Mike couldn’t confront at the moment. He was too consumed with the idea that this was everything falling into place. Which wasn’t to say things happened for a reason – because surely Claire hadn’t been _meant_ to die, and certainly not the way she’d died – but that life had a strange and redeeming way of sorting out the most despaired circumstances and restoring them to something as close to hope as they could get.

 

Ryan realized this too, shook his head and let out a shaky sigh. “I don’t how I’m going to live with it, Mike. What I did. How I lost her.”

 

Tightening his grip around Ryan’s waist, Mike was silent for a while longer. And then, it came to him.“Gradually,” he explained. “One day at a time. And with me.”

 

He heard Ryan swallowing down his tears – the ones he had managed not to cry out over the past five days as Mike waited outside his door – and felt him nod and pull him even closer.

 

They stilled. They didn’t have to figure it all out in one night.

 

 Ryan rested his chin on Mike’s head and looked past him into the kitchen. It glowed with mild yellow light and he could picture Claire standing in it, years ago, holding a glass of wine, and laughing. And he could hear her voice echoing around the loft, and he thought back, and did some rough math, and wondered where Mike was then. A year out of high school, probably; displaced Californian trying to fit in with the pale, tight-lipped Connecticut crowd at Wesleyan, applying to the Bureau and watching Carroll coverage and reading _Poetry of a Killer_ in between midterms. He thinks of Claire again, briefly, happy as she could’ve feasibly been back then given the events, and it’s all so random, Ryan realizes, and yet, so intentional. Everything. Their history, and the parallel of Mike being so far away at the time, but also so close, and their delicate and tragic paths all somehow converging in a series of well-planned accidents that none of them had seen coming or tried to avoid. It was a labyrinth of _but what if we had_ and _but what if I hadn’t_ kinds of thoughts and the only place they drove Ryan was crazy. He’d thought, up until now, that accepting the FBI’s offer – or, rather, plea – to come onboard as a consultant had been another terrible decision for the books. But he flashed back to Mike, standing in headquarters that day, and blue eyes, and he knew he’d been wrong.

 

Ryan blinked, and the playback ceased. Claire was gone, again, sure as she still would be in the light of day. He pulled back just enough to kiss Mike’s head, cherished the current and fragile truth that he was still there. And then he inhaled, with a final, undeniable, and freeing realization he could feel deep in his core for the first time since he was a teenager in a junkie’s shoebox apartment with a trembling grip on a revolver—

 

He didn’t regret _everything._

 

 

*

 


End file.
